- 109
Paul Gauguin
Description
- Paul Gauguin
- HEAD OF A TAHITIAN WOMAN
- Stamped with the woodcut seal PGO (lower right)
Traced monotype printed in inks - recto
Pencil - verso- 11 1/2 by 8 1/4 in.
- 29 by 21 cm
Provenance
Private Collection, Denmark
Acquired from the above in the 1950s
Exhibited
Condition
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Catalogue Note
The present work, created by Gauguin in 1894 on his return from the first Tahitian voyage, is one of a group of monotypes that deal with Tahitian subjects. It is an example of Gauguin's early studies, which led him to this new interest. He believed Tahitian women to possess a beguiling and exotic beauty, and depicted them in a way unseen in any other avant-garde art of his time.
In his detailed study of Gauguin's monotypes, published in 1973, Richard S. Field describes the technique: "The monotype is a special hybrid of print and drawing... It owes and appeals to a double nature: it preserves the spontaneity and freedom of drawing while adding, in the act of printing, an element of chance - an uncertainty born of the pressurized interaction of pigment and paper." (Richard S. Field, Paul Gauguin's Monotypes (exhibition catalogue) Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1973, p.13). Writing to his patron Gustave Fayet, Gauguin described his technique of traced monotype, "First you roll out printer's ink on a sheet of paper of any sort; then lay a second sheet on top of it and draw whatever pleases you. The harder and thinner your pencil (as well as your paper) the finer the resulting line."
In the present work, the exotic, mysterious figure appears informal, void of artifice. Her vacant eyes possibly reflect the artist's absence from his Tahitian models while in Pont-Aven in 1894. Thus, as Richard Brettell suggests, "they have the collective quality of a daydream or a series of memories... we are encouraged by their very paleness and subtlety to imagine a lost original." (Richard Brettell, The Art of Paul Gauguin (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Art Institute of Chicago, 1988, p. 353).
Fig Il Paul Gauguin, Vahine no te vi: Femme à la mangue, 1892, oil on canvas, Baltimore Museum of Art, Claribel and Etta Cone Collection